“The Bar Council, which represents barristers in England and Wales, has said that the launch of Government consultations on reform of the legal aid system and on civil litigation is necessary but the impact of the proposals on the most vulnerable must be considered very carefully.”

“When determining the minimum specified term to be served by an individual who genuinely believed that the murder she had committed constituted an act of mercy, the facts that there had been a significant degree of planning or premeditation, that the victim had been particularly vulnerable because of disability and that there had been abuse of a position of trust should not be taken to be aggravating factors.”

“A police officer found guilty of hurling a woman head-first on to a concrete cell floor, leaving her with blood pouring from a head wound, began an appeal today (15 November) against his conviction and sentence.”

“The justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, worked hard today to try to remove some of the political sting from his much-anticipated unveiling of swingeing legal aid cuts. The scale of the reductions – £350m a year to be taken out of a £914m-a-year civil and family legal aid budget by 2014 – had been widely anticipated.”

“The government will announce today that it will pay millions of pounds in compensation to former Guantánamo Bay detainees following weeks of negotiations between lawyers for the government and the former prisoners.”

“The scope of Kenneth Clarke’s mooted reforms is breathtaking, and the legal aid cuts introduced as part of this process are brutal. A raft of reforms, from criminal justice right the way through to the funding of clinical negligence claims, are now up in the air.”